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The past, of course, is not always a predictor of the future. In her judicial roles, Sotomayor has been bound by U.S. Supreme Court rulings. She would not be the first on the Court to rule differently once given the freedom to do so.

However, there seem to be reasons for religious groups to hope that Sotomayor would be good news for religious freedom. She interprets the Constitution as limiting the entanglement of government and religion, even in the area of age discrimination where there are no explicit religious beliefs involved and regulation would be minimal. She gave deference to the individual's conscience when deciding what is a religious belief or practice. She appears to be somewhat permissive of governments allowing some religious holiday displays (and not others). Evangelicals may disagree with her positions on other issues or with her judicial philosophy, but Sotomayor's rulings on religion do not appear to be a major cause for concern.

Tobin Grant is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale. He is coauthor of Expression vs. Equality: The Politics of Campaign Finance Reform and many academic articles on politics and religion.

Christianity Today covers more political developments on the politics blog.

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May (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53